


A Study in Loyalty, Lynches, and Losing

by basicallymonsters



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Declan is a child, Falling In Love, Gansey is perpetually exasperated, M/M, Realizing Feelings, Ronan and Adam are obsessed with each other, but like on the dl, in their dumb way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 20:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5716813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basicallymonsters/pseuds/basicallymonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's when he switches from team Declan to team Ronan during their biweekly brawl that Adam thinks, maybe, he's in too deep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Loyalty, Lynches, and Losing

He just thought it would be more monumental, somehow.

He was waiting for certainty to hit the same way Ronan entered a room, like the crash of a cymbal or the fatal blow from a battering ram.

Instead it was the aching awareness of the seasons changing, your friends leaving, your youth fading. He started watching Ronan like waiting for the lights to change, waiting for their eyes to meet and skid away from each other like pool balls. Inevitable; in his guts along with his loyalty and his resentment.

Ronan's eyes caught on his fraying edges and pulled and pulled, and it was only a matter of time before he was reeled in.

 

Declan Lynch dropped in on Monmouth Manufacturing unannounced one afternoon, much to everybody's chagrin.

The inevitable flurry of raised voices and violence turned the room inside out. They were almost too fast to follow as they dodged and skittered across the room, narrowly avoiding stacks of books and helpless Henrietta miniatures. Adam was trained to catch punches before they landed, however, and so he sensed every contact, felt every breathless knock to Ronan's jaw secondhand.

It used to be that Adam would side with Declan a little bit in these weekly fights. Used to watch Ronan's eyes go swimming and molten where they were usually sharply composed. Every swipe brought vulnerability rippling to Ronan's surface, and in an ugly twisted part of his chest, Adam felt that Ronan deserved it.

Deserved to be dethroned, feel dirt underneath him for the first time in his life, get knocked down to Adam's level for once. Declan knuckled Ronan into corners, and Adam always felt a vindictive thrill that he was getting what was coming to him.

Not this time.

Ronan's mouth is bleeding, and he's spitting and grinning, ever the snake, his knuckles white and shaking. For the first time, Adam's listening to Declan, watching how his words snag on Ronan and rip at him like thorns, how Declan's 18 years of knowing him pays off in tearing flesh and dropping bravado.

Declan eats to the core of him before he can realize what's happening, and Ronan's only reaction is to rip out the splinters, suck out the poison - flailing and yelling so that he won't have to remember everything the way Declan does.

The Lynches are a spiky, oppositional bunch, family is either disposable or fiercely necessary, and the brothers had fallen out of orbit years ago.

Adam watches Gansey trying to intercept and then give up, hands to the air and eyes rolling. Adam remembers when he might have been mortified by the violence, and he feels a loss in his chest.

Declan lands a dirty punch, swiping Ronan's feet out and catching him distracted and falling. Adam feels fiercely angry at Declan for a moment, who stomps on Ronan's hand and tells him, hushed and visceral, that he killed their family.

"That's enough." Adam feels his voice scrape out before he can catch it, and all eyes shift to him. He starts towards the brothers, in too deep now to back out.

He never gets involved. He lets Ronan work his anger out, thunder about and emerge bloody and wiser, maybe, hopefully.

But he's finding something furious and un-mined at Declan now. Maybe he's remembering Ronan's shaking corpse, or maybe there's something fiercely wrong about hurting the Ronan Adam has been learning;

The Ronan with the closed eyes and praying hands and lax mouth, the Ronan that loves him, he knows. The Ronan he can't properly see, like trying to find the top of an endless wall or staring into the sun.

Trying to care for an abstract concept is exhausting, Adam thinks, and Declan clearly couldn't cope.

He almost laughs out loud at the look on Declan's face, politely furious, hands around his brother's throat.

He releases him, and Adam feels a confusing surge of relief at Ronan out of his brother's reach, gasping on the floor, eyes trying to focus.

The Lynch brothers are traditionally matched, but Ronan was caught in a rare moment of sleep when Declan came by, and his fighting was lethargic and messy. He had been losing, badly, and Adam had never seen that before. Maybe that's where the rage came from, maybe he saw himself in the Ronan cowering on the floor.

His anger flags a little bit now that consequences are inevitable and Declan is hulking in a slim, sharp kind of way. There's absolute silence in the room, and Adam searches for words like patting down empty pockets for keys.

"I just… think it ought to be a fair fight," Adam says carefully, fists clenching at his sides.

Declan cocks his head at him like he knows full well that Adam used to be on his side, like he can sense Adam's change in teams, and he's calculating his losses. He runs the least bloody of his fingers down cobalt lapels and buttons his jacket.

"Do you think that Ronan's behaviour is fair?" Declan asks, and Adam shrugs.

"Do you think I should allow him to drag me with him through the mud and shit his education away without so much as answering my calls? Being tragic is only acceptable for so long after the actual tragedy."

Adam feels hatred stir in his gut, but he doesn't say anything. Ronan has scrambled to his feet behind him, but Adam shoots him a warning glance when he makes to lunge forward. He stops short.

Declan looks back at him and hums, vaguely amused.

"Oh. I see." He glances between them. Adam thinks wildly that he and Ronan could take him, together, tag team him.

"I'm sure Ronan's received my message anyhow," he sniffs, scooping up his discarded leather gloves and satchel.

"Wait by the phone," Declan mocks, traipsing towards the door.

"Fuck yourself," Ronan says in the same condescending tone, and then spits blood onto the hardwood. Declan flips him off with one hand and hauls the door closed with the other.

Ronan's eyes flicker to Adam's.

"I don't need you to feel sorry for me, Parrish."

Adam almost laughs. That's _his_ line.

"Says the idiot who got into a fistfight with my father," Adam retorts.

Ronan narrows his eyes, but one is too swollen to shut, and Adam can't decide if it's more or less intimidating.

"Please. That's the _least_ idiotic thing I've done. And this isn't even about that. It's about Declan and-"

"It's about friends looking out for each other, actually," Adam interrupts, crossing his arms neatly.

"Friends," Ronan sneers. "Since when are we friends? We're alternates for Gansey's passenger seat."

"Pardon me, I'm not a part of this," Gansey says, eyes wide and hands outstretched vaguely towards both of them, trying to keep the peace.

"Of course you're a part of this, you're the fucking _centre_." He looks like he wants to say more, but his jaw clenches painfully instead.

"I can handle Declan," Ronan continues, "You calling him out only makes him think he's winning."

"He _was_ winning," Adam says evenly.

"He got lucky," Ronan snaps. He turns to go, his whole body coiled to punch walls and hurt feelings.

"Ronan."

He does his smokers exhale, but he turns to face him, and Adam can see it now, the way he's barely holding his broken body together.

"You're a shitlord who won't let us help you, but. You're not just Gansey's friend anymore, alright?"

Ronan's face twists.

"Fine."

Adam marks it down as a victory when he doesn't slam the door on the way into his bedroom.

"That was unusually civil of you two," Gansey sniffs, arms folded and expression quizzical.

Adam shrugs. "It's not like we could get along any worse."

"No there's - I don't know. Something different about both of you."

Adam feels his heartbeat in his ears but he can't quite pinpoint why.

"I guess we're even now," Adam says finally, and Gansey makes a face.

"I don't like the way you guys use violence as payment. I don't understand why everything has to be so reckless, it's as if you can only connect over matching bruises," he says sternly. Adam snorts, feeling suddenly lighter.

"At least we're on the same team," he says around a mouthful of laughter.

Gansey shakes his head, bewildered. "I suppose. Just try not to push it. Friendship with Ronan is… intricate. Like defusing a bomb. Every day," he rolls his eyes.

Adam quirks a smile. "I appreciate a challenge."

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually one of the first ideas that came to me after reading the raven boys!
> 
> Adam was always so cool and blasé about Ronan fighting, and I thought it would be really telling if one day he wasn't.


End file.
